


Doctor Who - Colepaldi RPF - Questions you only ask at midnight

by Colepaldi-in-the-Tardis (Samstown4077)



Series: Colepaldi Collection [29]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Humour, Locked In, Romance, Suppressed Feelings, christmas special 2014, last christmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 20:30:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2886521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samstown4077/pseuds/Colepaldi-in-the-Tardis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jenna and Peter get locked in on the Christmas Special set over night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doctor Who - Colepaldi RPF - Questions you only ask at midnight

**Author's Note:**

> So this story is about three prompts I got on tumblr (J&P locked in overnight, Jenna tells Peter she stays and Peter tells Jenna she looks good with the mask).  
> For exact people: I honestly thought the bedroom (from the Christmas Special set) and the fireplace set are in one room (don't know why I came up with it), so when you read it, it's one room. Just go with it.  
> Please remember this is a fictional story.  
> Don't read if you don't like RPF and I am not a native English speaker, so sorry for any mistakes and thanks for reading anyway.

 “What the…,” Peter stared at the door handle he tried to turn, “no, no, no.”

The door didn’t open.

 

“What?” Jenna peaked up from the couch, she was laying.

****

It was eleven o'clock at night and they had finished filming for the day half an hour ago, and because the bedroom set was so nice and chilly, Peter, Jenna and Nick had sat down a bit to talk and to cool down from the busy work day. Nick had left first and after another few minutes Peter had decided to call it a day, and had made his goodnight wishes to Jenna and wanted to leave, but didn’t came far.

****

“The door, I can’t open it,” he joggled again with the door knob.

****

“You have to turn it to the left,” Jenna had lain back again, staring into the fire, that was still glowing.

****

Peter rolled his eyes, “I am turning it to the left! And yes, I tried the other way round too!”

****

Now Jenna was a bit confused and looked up again over the edge of the sofa. “What do you mean?”

****

Peter turned around, his arms whirling around in the air, “It is locked! I mean I can’t open the door.”

****

Frowning, she jumped up and walked up to him, “You just try to kid me right? You're joking,” she glanced at the door behind him.

****

A bit offended he gaped at her, “Do I look like I am joking?” he held up his wrist with his watch. “At eleven o’clock at night?”

****

“Certainly, yes.”

****

He stepped aside, presenting her the door with his hands, “Please. Try yourself.”

****

She frowned again at him, huffed and then stepped to the door and tried to open it. Nothing. She tried again, leaning against it, in case it was jammed, but it didn’t help. “The damn door is locked!”

****

“Oh, really? You are kidding me!” he emphasized every word and Jenna couldn’t help but punch him slightly on the arm. “What was that for?”

****

“For being sarcastic,” she took a few steps back and looked up and down the door as if to find the answer to the problem. “Now what?”

 

“I… I don’t know,” Peter fiddled with the hem of his jumper. “We should call someone.”

****

“Good plan,” Jenna turned toward him smiling. “So you have your phone here?”

****

His mouth opened, but he kept quiet and looked like a fish, before closing it again. “Nooo.”

****

“What?” she shrieked. “Why do you have no phone with you?”

****

“Because it is eleven o’clock at night. All the people I know are sleeping around that time and no one wants to call me and I don’t want to call someone else. So that is why I don’t have my phone with me,” he explained hastily.

****

“Great!”

****

“What do you mean great? Surely you have your phone with you,” he made a dismissive gesture, but when realising that Jenna made no attempt in getting her phone out, he became a little worried. “You have your phone with you, haven’t you?”

****

“No, actually I don’t.”

****

“Why not? You always have your phone with you,” he walked back to the table and sat grumpily down onto the stool.

****

“You might have noticed, that I am wearing just a nightie since one week, that has no good pockets, and I don’t want to lose it, so I don’t have it with me,” she explained, and sat across from him.

****

A few moments went by in silence, where they both considered the door and the situation.

****

“We could kick it in,” Jenna suggested and earned a cocking eyebrow from Peter.

****

“I am not gonna stop you,” he leaned back into his stool, and crossed his arms in front of him.

****

“You are the man, you should kick it in,” she threw one of the Christmas crackers at him.

****

He grabbed for it and doted at her, “It’s a wooden door, that thing is fucking massive. The only thing that will happen is, that I break my shoulder or something.”

****

She huffed in discontentment, “Honestly, are you playing a prank here?”

****

“No, I am not! It was not me, who left… oh...yeah,” Peter made a face like an owl. “Frost, he left, and he must have locked it.”

****

“You think he locked us in, on purpose?”

****

He tried to balance the Christmas cracker on one finger, before he put it aside, “How can I tell? We are locked in, and everyone on set is probably gone home till now.”

****

Jenna looked around the room. Aside from the cameras standing around, it was at least very comfy. “Could be worst.”

****

“What do you mean?”

****

“We could be locked in the Tardis!”

****

Peter slowly nodded, “Yeah, spending the night in a blue box. Twenty years ago that would have been thrilling.”

****

“Would it?” she had taken the paper hat and had placed it onto her head again. Grinning at him with spread arms. “How do I look?”

****

“Ridiculous,” he glanced around and decided to change the stool for the couch. “You are right, could be worse.”

****

Jenna watched him settle down onto the couch, shoving his shoulders into the soft cushion and heard him exhale. He even shoved a few things on the table aside with his shoes before he placed them onto it. “I am hungry.”

****

Snickering she walked over to him, sitting down at the other side of the couch, “Why are you always hungry?”

****

His look was peeved, “I am _not_ always hungry!”

****

She leaned her back against the armrest and lay her legs on the sofa, she was so short that her feet only touched his thighs a bit. With a wriggle of her slippers she rephrased her question, “Why are you always hungry in the middle of the night?”

****

His glance fell first onto her slippers, than toward her face, “Who says that?”

****

“The last time you were hungry, we all knew what happened,” she smiled at him.

****

Scowling he answered, “Luckily there is no red button I can push.”

****

She wriggled again with her feet to tease him and he grabbed one of her feet with his hands, “Stop it, Coleman!”

****

“Are you ticklish?” she took one of the pillows and hugged them against her chest.

****

Still his hands on her feet, he smiled down to the table in front of him, filled with Christmas cookies,  “Maybe. Do you think these are eatable?”

****

“Yeah, why not?”

****

“Because they are laying around since days…,” he was already about to lean forward to take one of them. “But I am starving.”

****

She watched him nibble at the edge of one of the sweets, “So?”

****

He gave her a quick side look before shoving the whole thing into his mouth, “They are delicious!” and grabbed for another two. “Want one?”

****

Jenna took it from him and gave the thing a suspicious sniff. “We are locked in!” she then exhaled as if she just only had realized.

****

Snickering, his hand found its way back on top of Jenna’s feet. “As you said, could be worse. We have a fire, we have a couch and we have a bed.”

****

“I hope you know how that sounded?” Jenna watched his hand fiddling with one of the applications at her socks.

****

“I meant,” he reached again for the cookies, “one can sleep in the bed and the other on the couch, but if you don’t want the bed, I’ll take it!”

****

“You are a real gentleman, aren’t you?” she shoved herself forward, up to him and took away the bitten cookie out of his hand.

****

“Hey!”

****

She turned so that she sat aside from him, shoulder on shoulder and for a moment she was unsure if she should allow herself to sit so close to him, but she was tired and exhausted and she was unable to fight that battle now, so she just kept sitting there, leaning slightly against him, her arms around her legs. “Gosh, I am glad I am not wearing my mask. That would have been horrid.”

****

Peter glanced at her and then at the contact their shoulders made, “You look good in it.”

****

“You mean, it looks very convincing, and that why it looks good.”

****

Again his hands trailed along the hem of his sweater, “No, I mean, you really look good in it. How old you should supposed to be?”

****

“Eighty.”

****

“See, in case you look like this with eighty, you still look very beautiful,” he gave his answer an absent smile, remembering her, a few days ago, when she had showed up the first time with the mask on her face. The make up department had done a really good job. One of the assistants was so convinced by the mask, that he had asked Jenna what her name was, because he had thought the older version was played actual by an older actress.

****

Jenna’s eyes tried to catch sight of him, without turning her head. She tried to look without looking, but it was impossible for her. She repeated his sentence in her head and wasn’t even sure she had understood it correctly, but his silence and the fiddling of his hands told her she had understood it. Her feet rubbed against each other. “Still?”

****

He needed to clear his throat for some reason and he did it in a long theatrical way. “Well,” he scratched his neck, coughing, “still, yeah.”

There was no way he could go down the road without sounding embarrassing and without touching a topic, they never touched because of reasons. “Anyway,” he clapped his hands, “look at me,” he turned toward her, pointing at himself, grinning, “I already look like you in the mask. And I am only 56.”

****

“You don’t look a day older than 55,” she smiled at him.

****

“How very generous of you,” he leaned back and placed the arm that was close to Jenna onto the rest, she took the invitation and just leaned in. He would say if he would mind.

****

It surprised him first, but then he shrugged it off and let her lean in.

****

“Are you tired?”

****

“A little bit,” and then a long yawn followed. “Maybe a bit more than just a little.”

****

He smiled gently down at her, her head was resting on his shoulder, and she was staring into the fire. “So, go to bed, you can have it.”

****

“Yeah,” she murmured, but didn’t move. “One more minute.”

****

“What for?”

****

He could feel her smile, without seeing her, “Because it is a nice moment right now.”

****

“Oh,” he only said, and nodded more to himself. The hand on the rest lingered around in the air, and then he decided to come down on Jenna's shoulder, gently stroking her.

****

Minutes went by and she didn’t move and after a while he realized he didn’t wanted her to move. Slowly his head fell down onto the rest and when he was about to doze off Jenna’s voice brought him back.

“Do you really think I look good?”

****

His eyes fluttered open and for a moment he thought he had dreamed it. “Why are you asking this, at 12 o’clock at night?” he closed his eyes again, stroking her arm with his hand, as if he wanted to persuade her to got to sleep.

****

As an answer she rubbed her face a little bit into his jumper, “Because it’s a good time for such questions. Midnight.”

****

“The hour of the ghosts,” he mumbled drifting into sleep, but Jenna didn’t let him.

****

“Do you?”

****

There was no more barrier for him, no more strength to beat around the bush, so he gave in and understood why midnight was a good hour for such questions, “Of course, I do. I am not blind. I am just-”

****

“-don’t say old.”

****

That made him raise his head, “I am.”

****

“Whatever,” even she was dead tired, she managed to sound sulky.

****

“What's that supposed to mean?” he was well aware of her mood swing.

****

“It means,” she took a deep breath and faced him, “that I don’t see it.”

****

With that she buried her face again in his shoulder and left him alone with a blank face. His need for sleep was washed away in a second, and he stared long into the ending fire, while Jenna seemed to sleep at his side.

****

“But you leave,” the words found its way out in a whisper, without his permission and without real awareness that he spoke them out loud. He frowned over this, believing Jenna was asleep and knowing he wouldn’t find the courage to ask the same question in the morning again - and it made himself mournful. He looked down at her, the only thing that made him happy again in this moment, seeing her sleep in his arm, exhausted from the day.

Since the Christmas special had started they had become more tactile - not only the Doctor and Clara. _They_ had become it, for a reason they couldn’t easily explain.

After the World Tour they were separated for a bit, some holidays and some interview appointments they did alone. Peter was busy giving interviews and attending some little Q&A events, while Jenna attended a convention in the states. They met up at the Q&A with Steven, Michelle and the rest, but everything was busy and they hadn’t much time to talk. Only when they finally called everybody in for the Christmas shooting, they found back into old tracks. Old habits of talking, fun and being near to each other.

The bond, that had its origin almost a year ago, had become stronger every day. Even when she was in America and he had stayed in London, they never forgot about the other. Little reminders about the other scattered they way, everywhere they went. Not only because Doctor Who was all around them.

When Peter did some shopping he stumbled upon her favourite perfume, or a shop assistant with the name of her alter ego. Once he had opened one of his notebooks for a sketch, when a little paper had fallen out of it. The wrapping of a candy she liked. She had given one to him, and he had liked it too, but because the sweet was not available in the UK, she gave him the wrapping, so he could remember its name and could by it over the internet. Things like this showed him, how tight and strong this bond of coincidence had become.

****

“Who told you this?” her head moved and she looked at him with sleep in her eyes.

****

“I didn’t hear otherwise,” he only said and she nodded in agreement. Then she took the pillow she had hugged earlier and placed it into his lap, lying her head onto it and he watched her making herself comfortable without wasting any thought about does and dont’s.

****

“You know we’re filming a happy end,” she shoved her hands under her face, tucking her knees up she looked like a curled up cat to him.

****

“I know. Also we are filming a No-happy end.” Steven had written two versions and they would film both of them, because so no one of the crew would actually know if Jenna would stay or not.

Not even Peter knew, what was his own fault, he now concluded, because he never had asked her straight forward.

****

“You never asked me,” she read his mind.

****

For a long period of time he had assumed that she would stay, so long he wouldn’t hear otherwise. Till a remark of a friend of his made him reconsider his assumption, and from there on he thought, she would leave, as long as she wouldn’t tell him that she wouldn’t. Quickly he found out, that his thoughts about the topic of her leaving were like a carousel - never reaching an end, never giving away a clear answer. Why he never had found the strength to ask her? Certainly the fear of a “no”.

However he was able to give interviews without looking sad - good actor he was.

****

“I considered, you would tell me,” he reached for the blanket that laid over the rest, and placed it over Jenna, taking care that her feet were covered - because he knew she hated when they weren’t. Why he knew that, he had forgotten.

****

“Would you miss me, when I wouldn’t stay?”

****

Easy answer, “Of course.”

****

He felt her laugh in silence in his lap, “That was not the question.”

****

His hands ruffled through his hair, “What was the question then?”

****

“The exact same words, but..,” she knew he would understand.

****

Not an easy answer, “The exact same answer, but…”

****

Silence fell over them and he tried to figure out what words needed to be said, that she would finally tell him, but he figured there were words, he couldn’t say out loud and so he needed to wait for her.

****

“After Matt (Smith) had left, I told myself, to follow his example. After a year, and then…,” she didn’t know how to say it.

****

Peter’s hand tugged the blanket at different spots, as an excuse of keeping his hands busy and away from her hair. When all of the blanket was in place he gave in to his feelings and ran his fingertips through her hair. “Then?”

****

_This happened._ Unsaid, but both knew this was the answer. _Them happened._

****

“I’m not leaving, and you know that,” she spilled out. “You know why.”

****

Somewhere a clock stroke one in the morning.

****

He didn’t know he held his breath till he let it out.

****

“Yes, I know.” His fingers sank deep into her hair, making little circles on the back of her head. “Try to sleep.”

He thought about telling Nick how dare he was, being so careless, that he had locked them in overnight. On the other side, it was one of the best things that had happened to them in a long while. “I am glad, I really am,” he said after a pause, and he felt Jenna touch his knee for a second.

****

Jenna smiled. Peter smiled. One more year. And a bond unbreakable.

 

([gifcredit](http://dadskills.tumblr.com/post/106175986090/the-doctor-smiles-doctor-who-christmas-special))

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed (or not), please leave a comment or Kudos!?
> 
> I publish regularly for Colepaldi RPF.


End file.
